Vital Statistics cuts backlog for certificates
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2022 (1276 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
After thousands of Manitobans were forced to wait months for birth, marriage and death certificates, Vital Statistics said it has whittled down its massive backlog.
At the end of March 2021, Vital Statistics was staring down a stack of more than 25,600 birth, marriage and death certificate applications. However, as of late October 2021, the province said that backlog had almost been eliminated.
As of this week, 4,460 applications for birth certificates (including 3,451 that required additional followup due to errors or omissions) were in the queue at Vital Statistics.
Another 616 marriage and 831 death certificate applications were in the queue, with approximately 85 per cent of those applications containing errors or related to unregistered events.
The province said the average turnaround time for certificates that do not contain errors or omissions was 2.4 weeks as of Feb. 13.
Followup correspondence is required if there are errors or missing information in applications that lead to longer-than-average turnaround times, the province noted.
The proactive disclosure of wait times was put on pause when the Fort Whyte byelection was called on Feb. 22.
“The branch is on track to achieve and sustain a two-week turnaround time for regular service online applications for certificates (birth, death, marriage) where the application is complete (there are no errors or missing information) and relate to a fully registered event,” a provincial spokesperson said in a statement.
In early November, Manitobans were waiting an average of eight weeks to receive a certificate from Vital Statistics. Waits ballooned again in December to nearly 11 weeks and gradually fell throughout February.
The spokesperson said several employees were hired in this fiscal year to improve operations at the branch while recruitment to fill vacant positions is underway.
Some public servants with relevant experience have been reassigned to Vital Statistics to address operational requirements and the branch is currently staffed with 34 full-time equivalent employees and 10 term positions.
— Staff